Monday, January 7, 2008

"07/01/2008 Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh on Sunday called on France to provide assistance to the Palestinians, saying he welcomed "all international efforts" aimed at enhancing security in the region. In a letter to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Haniyeh said the Gaza government is "prepared to cooperate with all international efforts to establish security and stability in the region."

According to AFP, the Hamas leader praised Sarkozy's call for an international peacekeeping force in the Palestinian territories, made at an international donors’ conference in Paris last month. Haniyeh said Sarkozy had proposed some "positive and encouraging initiatives" at the conference. "We followed your speech at the recent Paris conference in which we found many positive and encouraging initiatives aimed at ending the occupation and restoring the legal rights of the Palestinian people and ending their suffering," wrote Haniyeh.

He also said he would accept French mediation in resolving the Hamas-Fatah feud. However, Haniyeh blasted the revived settlement talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas."

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So, Habila now welcomes "Sarkozy's call for an international peacekeeping force in the Palestinian territories." That is to say a NATO occupation force disguised as a "peacekeeping" force. Only a couple of weeks ago Hamas blasted this idea and vowed to fight such a force.

".....Both Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni have spoken positively about an international force in recent days, and they were not alone.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said at Monday's donors' conference in Paris that France "proposes the deployment, when the time and conditions are right, of an international force to assist the Palestinian security services."

Abbas said Tuesday he supported Sarkozy's proposal, telling a press conference in Paris that he welcomed the idea. "We are working for this to become the international position in the near future," he said.

Livni hinted at a NATO meeting in Brussels earlier this month that NATO would have to play a part in ensuring security if Israel were to carry out significant territorial concessions......

"We are now in a process that is expected to strengthen the capabilities of the Palestinian Authority - so they would fight terror instead of Israel," Livni said. "However, one cannot exclude the possibility that we will need to discuss what can be the role of NATO in supporting the need for a change, a real change, on the ground."

Hamas spokesmen, however, have said consistently they would oppose any international force and view it as an occupier no different than Israel......."